


And Over Again

by InTheGreySpaces



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:40:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22421218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InTheGreySpaces/pseuds/InTheGreySpaces
Summary: Sam and Dean take control of their fate and turn the tables on Chuck. But at what cost?
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 8
Kudos: 16





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lochinvar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lochinvar/gifts), [Linden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linden/gifts).



> With inspiration from Seanan McGuire's _Middlegame_

To say he didn’t expect to see that car on this day in this precise place would have been a lie, but no matter how many times he had imagined and reimagined this moment, knowing when and how it would arrive, it was still a shock to watch twenty years dissolve before his eyes when they came to rest on the figure leaning casually against the slick, black and gleaming front quarter panel of the Impala.

The car had been rebuilt. To the unpracticed, unfamiliar eye, the car was in pristine condition, original to the frame that held her, but he had known that vehicle like few other human beings ever would; and though he’d not been inside her or touched her sleek steel skin in so many years, the blanket of memory engulfed him instantly in the faint whispers of classic rock music over road noise on rainy nights traveling down highways without names under the thin protection of a worn army blanket tucked into the back seat with one cheek pressed against the supple leather and the other against his brother’s heart. It had been his home for too many years for him not to recognize even the most subtle shift in her weight and line that was without doubt at the hand of the man propped against her side.

The man, too, might have been rebuilt, at the hand of surgeons, or more likely powers of a less natural origin than human; but he was more difficult to read because there were many of his scars, both visible and not, that he had chosen to keep.

He didn’t wear their father’s old leather jacket anymore, it was thick water resistant canvas now; and he’d traded the too long, baggy jeans of a youth still trying to fit in, for something plainer and closer fitting; and the boots on his feet spoke a lot less to style than to durability, steel-toed still, as always. But the way he carried himself, shoulders back and straight, with an air of invincibility that had served to quiet his baby brother’s rapidly beating heart in the darkest hours; that was all the same. His eyes had grown harder and darker, over the years, the set of his mouth was thin, and the angular features that had sent most of the female population from Wisconsin to Georgia and California to Vermont swooning with unrequited desire had become chiseled and rugged, accentuated by a neat, close cropped beard that, to the discerning eye, hid a myriad of scars.

‘Am I late?’ Dean asked.

‘No,’ Sam replied. ‘You’re right on time.’


	2. Chapter 2

Dean stared at the walls. Where 'normal' people would hang pictures of family or friends, there were instead a myriad collection of sigils and symbols and arcane glyphs formed from silver and iron carved into blocks of Himalayan salt and hung beside framed bits of ancient parchment scorched at their edges from the witch fires of Salem; watermarked from storage in lost sea chests stored in damp basements of forgotten museums; or faded and crumbling nearly to the same dust that their long dead mystic masters had become over a millennia ago.

He looked down at his feet before he followed his brother down the long, narrow entry hall. He stood on a coarse rug, meant to prompt visitors to wipe their feet before entering; but it served another purpose, too. He knew without a doubt that a black light would reveal an intricately painted Devil's trap, invisible to the naked eye, but he could feel the power of it through the soles of his boots.

Less well hidden was the dark brown stain discoloring the wood around the trap—the shadow of old blood.He wandered who had died here.

He wondered if it was him.

Sam was in the kitchen at the end of the hall now. Dean could hear him scooping coffee grounds into a percolator basket and setting it to brew. Sam was a tea man. Dean didn't have to know him—and he didn't—to know this was true, so the coffee was for Dean's benefit. He didn't wonder how Sam knew he preferred it or how he knew he took it black when he handed him the steaming mug as he finally entered the kitchen, an inky shadow against the bright white of laminated cabinets and worn linoleum. He stared into his mug, avoiding eye contact with the man across the room. They were brothers, and they were complete strangers. They hadn't stood in the same space together for nearly twenty years.

'Is it over?' Sam asked.

'No, ' Dean replied without having to ask what Sam meant.

Sam sighed heavily and stared down into his own mug. 'I'm not sure what else to do. Not at this point.'

Dean nodded. They'd had this cryptic conversation before. He didn't knew how many times, and he didn't know the details—only Sam did. But he did know they'd been here before, many times, maybe not quite like this, but here just the same.

'Dad?' Sam asked.

'Chasing a pack of Vamps with Bobby in South Dakota,' Dean replied. He settled against the counter and sipped his coffee. It was hot and strong, just like he liked it. Across from him, Sam's mug stopped halfway to his hips and he raised his eyebrows like this news surprised him. So, that was different. Different from what he didn't know, but different.

'You still teaching witchcraft and theology?' Dean asked, gesturing vaguely at the hallway and the contents of its walls.

'During the week, yes,' Sam replied.

It was Dean's turn to raise his eyebrows. 'We stayed away.'

Sam gave him a rueful look. 'Did you think that was going to stop them?'

'Shit,' Dean said sullenly.

Sam shrugged. 'It kept me on top of my game.'

Dean finally gave his brother a good once-over look. He'd been afraid to so far, afraid to find the man too changed from the boy he's loved with a passion strong enough to break the world...several times over. But he couldn't remember that. Maybe Sam did.

'How many times?' Dean asked.

Sam wouldn't answer at first. He just stared into the middle distance between. The unbridgeable gap.

And there it was.

Dean's eyes came alive with a fire that made Sam shudder almost visibly, but he kept still, clinging to the counter edge behind him and the acrid smell of black coffee wafting up from his cooling mug. Sometimes it took hours, days, even years—if they survived that long—for him to see that light in his brother's eyes.

'Enough,' was all Sam answered into the sudden charged and waiting stillness.

'Tell me?' Dean asked.

'Eventually,' Sam said. 'But for now, tell me where you are.'


	3. Chapter 3

'It's time to get home to Poughkeepsie, Dean.'

The words bubbled up with blood in them. The black in Dean's gaze flickered and he staggered back, the First Blade still raised and dripping his brother's blood. Sam sagged against the wall and slid down it, letting out a pained moan and a weak cough as he hit the cold concrete.

'Cause there's monsters at the door,' Dean murmured.

Sam nodded weakly, smiling, garish through bloodstained teeth. 'People to save,' he rasped.

Dean hesitated, the Blade jerked in his hand, keening and hungry for the kill. His lips curled back in a snarl and Sam thought for a moment this would be the time it failed; this would be the end and Chuck—God—would win. He tipped his head back to gaze up at his brother's luminescent black eyes as his heart struggled for the next beat. Dean dropped to one knee, lips still peeled back and waved the tip of the Blade in slow motion in front of Sam's face, weaving like to hypnotize him before he pressed the jagged edge under Sam's jaw.

'Things...’ Dean ground out like the words were being forced from him. 'Things to...Hunt.'

Sam let out the last breath he had in reserve in a relieved sigh and the world turned left.

***

'Sammy, wake up! Jesus, kiddo, wake the hell up!'

Sam's eyes shot open and he clutched his ribs, sucking in a huge breath. His lungs burned like he'd been drowning. Not in water, but blood. His own blood.

'Dean?' he croaked.

'Christ, Sammy...'

The room was dark, even San's excellent night vision couldn't pick out his brother's expression, but the relief was obvious. He reached out and unerringly found Dean's hand. It was clammy, and Sam suddenly and desperately wanted to be able to see Dean's eyes, the dark mossy green of them like river stones washed for a hundred years in ancient forest streams.

‘Bad dream,' he managed, clinging to Dean's fingers.

'Really?' He sounded angry, very angry, and Sam knew he only sounded like that when he was really, really frightened. '’Cause it sounded like you were frickin' dying or something, Sammy.'

Sam shuddered and squirmed across the threadbare mattress toward the sound of his brother's voice. It had felt like that, yes. Like he was dying, or maybe already had died and waking had somehow brought him back to life. The weight was still in his chest even though the burning had faded away. Something was not right, and he had to fix it. Now. Now was the moment.

He had to see Dean's eyes.

In a flail of limbs and swearing from both of them as elbows and knees jabbed into softer fleshy bits, Sam scrambled from the bed, grabbing for the battery powered lantern he kept by the bed.

He knocked it over in his haste and it rolled a few feet away. He dove for it, clutching it.

'Dammit, Sammy! What the hell? Would you just—'

Sam snapped the light on and swung around. Dean was scowling at him, rubbing where Sam's elbow had connected with his temple, shading his eyes against the sudden bright light. Green eyes. Perfectly bright, furious green eyes. Of course they were. What else would they be?

Sam's knees buckled and he sank to the floor. Dean stared at him, worry starting to take over at the edges of his anger.

'Sammy, you are acting like the total freak that I know you are, and you're starting to piss me off. So, tell me what the hell is going on!'

San shoved a handful of damp, rebellious and shaggy bangs out of his eyes and shook his head. Dean took it for stubbornness.

'Sammy, I swear I'm gonna—'

'It was just a dream, Dean. A really bad dream.' He paused to smile at his brother maniacally. 'Killer clowns.'

Dean grabbed the pillow from the bed and hurled it at Sam's face, but he was trying not to smile. 'You are so full of shit, baby brother. Now get your skinny ass back in this bed. You have school tomorrow.'

Sam stood and shuffled to the bed, falling into it gratefully. Then Dean collected him into his strong arms, kissed the top of his head and pulled up the blanket before he snapped out the light.

Sam closed his eyes and concentrated on the color green.


	4. Chapter 4

'Lost.'

The word was hoarse and harsh and Dean hadn't meant to say it.

But it had been too long. Too long out in the dark alone, except for the damn angel who was no better than a talking toaster as far as Dean was concerned; too long chasing shadows whose owners he could never glimpse clearly; too long flapping at the end of Sam's leash with no clear view of his path. The anger flared in him, sudden and fierce. He slammed his mug on the counter beside him. He was gratified by Sam's flinch even of it showed itself as no more than a tightening at the corners of his eyes.

'I’m out there fighting, getting bloody, fencing with shadows! For what?’ he shouted. He glared hotly across the space at his brother, leveling the full force of his fury in the look; but the anguish it met in Sam's gaze made him sag back. He dipped his head . 'l'm lost, Sammy. And so fucking alone.'

It felt like surrender admitting it, and Dean hated that. But it was a relief, too, like he'd been waiting years to say it. Maybe he had. Since Sam had refused Dean's request to come find their father that long ago Halloween night, he had felt alone—abandoned—a puppet at the end of Sam's strings following a playbook he’d never been given a chance to rehearse. 'I'm changing the tide, Dean,’ Sam had said. 'Trust me.' And Dean did. Every shred of logic said he shouldn't, but the core of him—the mystic center that knew where and when to strike so often with no concrete knowledge—did trust him, and only him; and Dean hated that, too.

So, he'd left Sam in his rear view in Palo Alto, headed south to Jericho to find John. Alone.

A few short nights later, standing in front of the smoking rubble of the dilapidated farm house that had formerly chained the tortured soul of Constance Welch to this corporeal plane as a Woman In White, Dean had felt the Earth lean into its axis and twist sharply. The world warped around him so that he stumbled in the dirt and dropped to his knees, gasping out his brother's name. Five minutes after that, Sam called. Dean could not even muster the breath to say hello. 'Tell Dad to stop looking.' Sam had said. 'It's my game, now.'

Yellow-Eyes was dead.

He had no idea what that meant for the future, but he did know that reality, his reality at least, had irrevocably shifted. Away from or toward what, he had no idea, but it was more than a week before he could shake the feeling that he was out of sync with everything around him.

And it was another eleven months before he spoke to Sam again.

'I don't trust you,' Dean said without looking up. 'I don't know you.'

'But you do,' Sam said. It wasn't insistent, not meant to convince, merely a statement of fact.

With a sharply muttered epithet, Dean nodded, in increments, every muscle in rebellion of the admission.

'And the state of play,' Sam urged gently.

Dean swore again, looked up, face blanked of the resentful anguish of a moment ago. 'Grim as fuck. Lucifer has destroyed Hell to spite his almighly father, and Chuck has destroyed Heaven because his angels were misbehaving. The Archangels are wrecking havoc and Amara is in the wind.' Dean squinted at Sam. 'But you know all this. You know everything, even if you don't get your hands dirty. You don't need me to tell you.'

'Me not "getting my hands dirty" is what's saving us right now.'

'How?' Dean sneered. It was childish and he knew it. He was acting like a grade schooler picking a fight on the playground.

Sam didn't rise to the bait. 'It's us together that he wants. By staying off the field of play, I've fouled his plans.'

‘Really? ‘Cause that’s not what it looks like from this side of the board. From over here, it looks a lot like poking a stick at the lion and the cage bars are bamboo,’ Dean retorted. ‘People have died, Sam! Are out there dying right now, and a lot more are going to if we can’t get this under control! You want to tell me how _that_ qualifies as fouling up his plans!’

‘If you knew— ‘

‘But I don’t! So why don’t you tell me!’ Dean was shouting, advancing across the space between them without even realizing it, and Sam was pressing back, robbed of an escape by Dean’s powerful looming form blocking the path to the door and his own traitorous heart because it wanted this. It was going to hurt them both, it always did, but he wanted it. Dean complained of being alone and lonely, but he didn’t know what he was missing, not really. His heart had a space in it reserved for Sam alone, and it ached, yes, but he didn’t have the memories to go with it. He didn’t have reel after reel of failed lives playing out in his head in picturesque detail, each of them a disaster caused and redeemed by the same thing: their passion and devotion to one another.

It was the piece Sam couldn’t destroy. Would not destroy, no matter the advantage it might give.

Dean was in front of him now, angry again, green eyes on fire, and Sam’s blood was rushing in his ears, head spinning with the sudden proximity of the man whose life was more important to him than the universe itself.

‘Don’t touch me,’ Sam whispered because he knew Dean was terrible at following orders.

Dean snarled and reached for his shoulder.

The world went black.


	5. Chapter 5

‘There has to be way, Rowena. There has to be an answer!'

Sam’s voice was desperate and pleading and angry. His brother's blood was pouring out between his fingers and the last shreds of his hope was going with it.

Rowena knelt by Castiel who was barely conscious, propped against a pillar on the far side of the throne room. He had little power left and what there was he refused to use on himself. The ex-witch-cum-queen-of-Hell tsked him into silence like a mother calming a fitful child when he struggled to reach for Dean.

‘When the Winchester boys come to Hell for safe haven, the World really has come to an end,’ she said softly. Cas finally gave into his wounds and Rowena's soothing ministrations and loosed his hold on consciousness. She moved the few feet then to Sam's side, kneeling across from him and covering his hands while he tried in vain to staunch the flow of blood from his brother's chest. He looked up at her, beseeching.

‘Oh, Samuel...' she murmured, forlorn. 'My kind isn't in the business of granting life.' She glanced briefly at Cas. 'That's reserved for higher powers.'

'But you're a witch!'

' _Was_ a witch, my boy,' she corrected guilty. 'And even then, it was only my own life I could save. The kind of power that could bring back the dead, that's magic even I wouldn't use.'

'There has to be something.' Sam's voice was barley a whisper.

'I can do one thing,' she conceded softly, and her heart nearly broke at the flare of hope in his eyes. 'I can promise you that I will take the greatest care of his soul, I will protect him and keep him for all of eternity.'

'No! No...’ Sam's whole body sagged, admitting its defeat even if his mind wasn't ready to accept it yet. It was a generous offer and good one––to keep a human soul intact in Hell would be no easy task––and it had the thinnest of silver linings in it at least. After all, only Billy and the Empty waited for them at the end of their line. In Rowena's keeping, Dean may be in Hell, but he would be reachable, and that gave Sam the time to try and pull off one more miracle.

If there were any left.

Rowena sat back on her heels and looked hard at Sam. After a long moment, spoke slowly and cautiously. 'There may be another way. If you can endure it.'

Sam's head snapped up. 'What? What way?' He had endured Hell and Lucifer himself. He wondered what she thought might be beyond him now.

She reached out and lifted Sam's hands deliberately away from Dean's chest where the gush of blood had slowed to a sluggish oozing. He was drifting away from them.

‘You cannot change the past, Samuel, and you cannot unmake yourself,' she said carefully. 'But you can remake both.'

Sam looked from Dean’s slack, pale face, to his own blood drenched hands, then to Rowena. ‘How?’

‘You know why by now,’ she said.

Sam nodded slowly. ‘It’s not the game he claims it to be.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And you can use that. Use it together with what I’ve taught you so far. Reset the field of play.’

Sam’s eyes shot wide. ‘That’s impossible.’

‘For anyone else, it would be,’ Rowena admitted. ‘But not for the two of you.’ Her face took on the intensely sincere look it had the moment before she had handed him the knife with which to kill her all those months ago. ‘The price is beyond your imagining and there are few with the strength to pay. The Winchester bothers are two halves of one whole, perfectly balanced in every way, a mirror of creation itself. Together, you can do it.’

Sam gulped, anxiously watching Dean’s chest as it rose and fell, labored and slow.‘What do I do?’

‘Choose a point. It will be your return point. Think carefully, because once you choose, it cannot be undone and anything that happened before cannot be changed.’

‘The beginning,’ Sam said immediately. ‘Before our mother was killed.’

Rowena shook her head. ‘No, Samuel. As a baby, what could you do, to change anything that happened that night? As a child growing up with the memories you have in your head now, what do you suppose would happen to you?’

‘I’d go insane,’ Sam admitted in disappointment. ‘Anyone would. Will I remember everything?’

‘No. No one remembers everything. They don’t have to. The mind and body absorb all that we experience to form the person we are, but only the turning points are written on the soul. Those things intrinsic to our being are what we truly remember. Those moments that give us purpose. That is what you will remember.’

Dean’s breath rattled in his chest and stuttered. Rowena bent over him, murmured something quietly and he eased, breath still shallow but more even.

‘I cannot hold him long, Samuel. You must decide.’

Sam flailed in his mind amid all the memories, wondering how to choose, how to find one that could serve as an anchor...and then he had it. It rose out of the depths, all but forgotten beneath the detritus of death and Hell and so much blood and loss, its details gone but for the sense of rightness it brought to his blood.

A week before his sixteenth birthday with John a month out on a hunt somewhere in the Appalachians, he and Dean had finally ended the long dance between them and come together. The earth did not open up, the universe did not share its wisdom, and choirs of angels did not sing; but Sam felt as if the last tumbler in a very complex lock had finally fallen into place and he and his brother would be bound in a way words had not yet been written to describe for the rest of their lives.

Looking at it now, he wondered how he did not think of that night every day of his life, and realized at the same time he didn’t have to. It was the cornerstone on which all the rest of his life had been built. It sustained him when everything else fell away.

Rowena saw the moment he decided. ‘Good. Now make the key.’

‘Key?’

‘It will take the power of you both to reset the cycle. You have to be in agreement. You have to go together, and you need something to trigger it that no one else will be able to interpret.’

Sam nodding, thinking hard. ‘Poughkeepsie,’ he whispered. ‘It was our code, so we would know if the other one was in trouble.’

Dean’s breathing stuttered again. Rowena splayed her hands in the air above him and uttered a sharp word as his chest rose on a final breath and held there under her command. She looked at him anxiously. ‘Build the spell, Samuel. Do it now.’

Sam looked at his brother’s frozen body, held tenuously in the balance by Rowena’s power. He looked up into her eyes. She smiled softly, kindly,

‘Find me. I’ll teach you everything I know. You’ll need it.’

He nodded and bent down to Dean’s ear. Rowena sat back with a whispered word and Dean’s last breath exhaled slowly as Sam murmured in his ear,

‘It’s time to get back to Poughkeepsie, Dean. There are monsters at the door. People to save and things to hunt.’

**Author's Note:**

> Don't get your hopes up...my muse is still emaciated. I can't promise a finish, but maybe posting this live will kick her into a higher gear. Fingers crossed.


End file.
